when our lines match up with the shapes of our longing

Think of that flare deep in the gut—love's 

visceral engine—when our lines match up 

with the shapes of our longing. 

 

Because love exists 

before logic or language. Why else 

would the painters of the caves, aware perhaps 

 

of the mind's growing sharpness, hide 

their animals in darkness. 

Think of the lines we have drawn between stars 

 

so the emptiness they outline 

might be, for a while, diminished; so the darkness 

we inherit is familiar. And what of the daughter 

 

of Butades the potter, in love 

with a boy from Corinth, a boy who would vanish 

into the extremis of war; how she traced 

 

on the wall his shadow's outline as he 

lay sleeping on the slender catafalque 

of her bed. There are several versions: 

 

that his shadow was cast 

by a candle, by a lantern, by moonlight 

reflecting off the Gulf of Corinth. It makes no difference. 

 

[Jude Nutter, 'III' from 'lanua: My Father's Rhythm Strip', in Dead Reckoning]